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Aston Lawyer, Solicitor

Category: Law

Satisfied Customers: 10734

Experience: Solicitor LLB (Hons) 23 years of experience in Conveyancing and Property Law

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I am in a process of buying a house. The situation is

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Hi,I am in a process of buying a house. The situation is the following.The lawyer suggested that we should sign the contracts, as they have no validity until we paid the 10% deposit, so my wife and I did so in our last visit to the lawyers firm.After we received the report of the plumber that we sent for an inspection, we were happy to proceed with the exchange, so I contacted the lawyer by email and asked him what information he needed from me to exchange, and what was sthe account number. So I paid.Right after paying I called him to let him know and he asked me what date for completion we had in mind and I told him that this could not be after the 5th of July.Apparently the vendor has arranged the 10th of August! And nobody has told us that. We are definitly not happy with that as we have to move out of our rental flat the 18th of July. They have exchanged contracts without telling us the completion date, and now we cannot negotiate anything.Is there anything we can do? I sent the money last Thursday the 28th May and I only found out today that they have arranged as completion date the 10th August and only because I was chasing them.Should it help, they told us how the procedure would be in a letter. They said that they would call us on the phone to read us the contract, and that that conversation would be recorded. Then they would send us the contract home for us to sign.Well.. they never called us so they have no proof of that conversation.Please I need your help.Thank youJoaquin

From the legal point of view, we Solicitors HAVE to speak to our clients before we exchange Contracts, to get authority from the client to exchange Contracts, and to get their consent to the proposed completion date.

Unless you had therefore authorised your Lawyer to exchange Contracts and complete "as and when the Seller wanted to" during your meeting, your Lawyer has been negligent as he should never have gone ahead and exchanged without checking with you first.

I note you had told him that completion needed to be by 5th July, so there does not appear to have been any good reason why your Lawyer exchanged and agreed the completion date without speaking to you first.

As regards ***** ***** can do, legally, completion is set for 10th August, and you won't be able to change this. You will therefore have to contact your Lawyer this morning, explain their negligence, and tell him in no uncertain terms that his Firm will have to be responsible for any additional costs incurred by you due to the fact you will have nowhere to live after 18th July.

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